Not an age but a date
August 6, 1965 - that when the voting rights act was passed
So I’m giving a pass to ignoring all of the abolitionists during slavery
- going dormant during reconstruction
- refloweriing for Jim Crow (and attending all those minstrel shows)
- being a participant or bystander for race riots in dozens of cities as well as 1000s of lynchings in late 19th/early 20th century
- noticing all the whites only signs post-Plessy
- doubling down on segregation after WW1
- signing whites only mortgages with federal loan money after WW2
- fighting integration with rocks and milkshakes and the foulest of language
- ignore Rosa parks
- Ignore medgar Evers
- ignore mlk
But there has to be a limit, right?
There has to be some time in there where we can finally say, ‘they had enough information to know better’
That the choices are willful ignorance or active hate
So the voting rights act is my line
No one after the voting rights act gets to put ignorance over humanity
The burden of context falls on the people trying to ‘explain’ Jones in the picture to demonstrate that we have progressed to the point where the picture is actually history - but it’s not history is it?
How tortured to non-existent was the NFL’s response to ‘BLM’?
‘BLM’ which is saying the same dang thing abolitionists have been saying for centuries
We can’t do ‘boys will be boys’ every time sexual assault gets discussed
We can’t talk about ‘groomers’ after an assault on the lgbtq community
We can’t keep contextualizing hate - it’s just cloaking it
We keep making the same hateful mistakes and it’s NOT because of holier than thou people